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Girl Most Likely gallery

What parents need to know

Positive messages

Labels and riches don't make a person; it's your character that counts. Also, families are often a dysfunctional lot, but dysfunction doesn't mean that relatives can't find a way to connect with each other.

Positive role models

Imogene is pretty self-centered and snobbish. Her friends are phonies. Her mother is neglectful. But her brother is sweet and kind, as is Lee, who's happy to enjoy being where he is, whether it's perceived as successful or not.

Violence

A man points a gun at a group of people, taking a woman hostage. It's played a little for laughs, but shots are fired, and the character is menacing (even if kooky). A woman fakes her suicide and is taken to a hospital, where she's forcibly restrained after trying to fight off hospital attendants.

Sex

Some kissing and making out in bed. No outright nudity, though characters are glimpsed in their underwear or under a sheet with shoulders bared. A conversation between two women references spanking during sex. Sexual innuendoes fly. Grinding on the dance floor.

A woman gets wasted during a night of heavy drinking that includes shots (and body shots) and Long Island iced teas.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Girl Most Likely is a dramedy that's heavier on the comedy than the drama, though the plotlines are pretty heavy and include an attempted suicide (faked), a nervous breakdown, parental abandonment, and the like. Expect some colorful language (mostly "s--t" and "hell"), heavy drinking and drunkenness, and some scenes showing couples making out heavily, as well as plenty of innuendo. There's also some gun violence; it's mostly played for laughs, but shots are fired.

User reviews

Parents say

Kids say

What's the story?

Imogene (Kristen Wiig) was once a promising playwright. But she squandered her opportunities by being fabulous and fabulously dressed in New York and getting hung up on "belonging" to the upper-crust New York City milieu. So when her affluent boyfriend (Brian Petsos) dumps her, it's no surprise that Imogene is lost. There are no other options besides Ocean City, New Jersey, where her flashy and eccentric (not to mention self-centered) mother (Annette Bening) is still living with Imogene's smart and sweet younger brother (Christopher Fitzgerald) and a mysterious new boyfriend everyone calls Bousche (Matt Dillon). There's also a new boarder (Darren Criss) ensconced in Imogene's old bedroom.

Is it any good?

QUALITY

Good cast, great lead, robust material: What's not to like? But somehow, GIRL MOST LIKELY is a disappointment, taking a premise that promises wit and bite and turning it into tepid mush. Imogene as an outsider desperate to be part of a world that only pretends to accept her is a plotline that offers so many routes to self-discovery, but the filmmakers punted, opting instead on the most obvious of paths. (There appears to be no other way to reinvention but to spit in the face of what you've become and tap into your old self. Not exactly groundbreaking stuff here.)

Wiig is kinetic and emotive. An arched eyebrow can convey both despair and a knowing laugh. Too bad she's written as a paint-by-numbers "snobby" person. The characterizations are so obvious that you're clubbed on the head with them. Criss is cute, but he and Wiig share little chemistry. Bening is woefully underused as Imogene's mom, and Dillon is hilarious, but to what end? It's as if the filmmakers couldn't decide what the movie was supposed to be, exactly. The quirks are piled onto serious pathos, leaving the film in a tonally muddled spot. Girl Most Likely is as its title suggests: a film looking for an identity, much like the titular girl.

Families can talk about...

Families can talk about the blend of comedy and drama in Girl Most Likely. Why isn't this a straight-up comedy? What defines "dramedy"? Does the combo of light and heavy tone work in this movie?

What's the possible downside of making light of serious issues like suicide and heavy drinking? Do you feel like watching these elements on the screen influences any decisions you might make?

Do the characters feel realistic/believable? What about the situations they find themselves in?

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When you use our links to make a purchase, Common Sense Media earns a small affiliate fee from Amazon or iTunes. As a nonprofit organization, these funds help us continue providing independent, ad-free services for educators, families, and kids while the price you pay remains the same. Thank you for your support.Read more

Kristen Wiig movie is more serious than her SNL skits

Imogene (Kristen Wiig) tries to commit suicide. Her friend finds her passed out on her bed so she checks her in to the hospital. The hospital had too many patients already, so they had no choice but to send her home with her mom, and a bunch of funny things happen. Suicide is a serious topic that needs to be brought up. But this movie attempts to do it in a comical way. Doing it in a comical way makes people more comfortable with talking about it. And talking about it will find solutions. There is an attempted suicide with a bottle of pills, and a sex scene.

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